Indian aviation offers immense opportunities for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and efforts are underway to increase the presence of Indian suppliers in the global aerospace market, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said on Thursday.
Addressing the CII conference VORTEX 2026 in New Delhi, Naidu said global aerospace companies were showing strong interest in India's aviation sector, with Indian airlines having placed orders for more than 1,600 aircraft.
India, he said, should not become merely a hub for assembling aerospace components but should also develop capabilities to design, certify and manufacture them.
India is currently the world's third-largest domestic aviation market. Naidu said the country's aerospace and defence market was projected to nearly double from over USD 30 billion in 2025 to USD 61 billion by 2035.
The country's commercial aviation fleet is also expected to more than double to around 2,050 aircraft, creating significant opportunities for Indian manufacturers and MSMEs to join global aerospace supply chains, he said.
Naidu said Indian airlines had an order book of around 1,640 aircraft, translating into an estimated requirement for 80 crore parts and components.
"Globally, Airbus and Boeing together have orders for over 15,000 commercial aircraft, and this is not just about what is coming to India. This is another big opportunity for our Indian MSME sector," he said.
Indian MSMEs and startups already supply aircraft components worth more than USD 4 billion annually to global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), Naidu said.
"The domestic aerospace manufacturing market has the potential to grow into a USD 10 billion industry over the next decade, but potential does not automatically become production; it requires a deliberate ecosystem," he said.
Civil Aviation Secretary Samir Kumar Sinha said various models for manufacturing aircraft in India were being explored.
Boeing India and South Asia President Salil Gupte said Boeing sourced products and services worth nearly Rs 14,000 crore from India annually. The company has around 300 suppliers in the country, of which 25 per cent are MSMEs.
Gupte said the challenge was not merely to manufacture aerospace components in India but to scale up production rapidly.
"The opportunity before us is not to indigenise Indian aerospace manufacturing, but to internationalise Indian aerospace manufacturing," he said.
He also stressed the need for Indian companies to manufacture complete assemblies and complex systems and develop intellectual property.
Airports Authority of India Chairman Vipin Kumar said the country's growing civil aviation sector offered significant opportunities for MSMEs and stressed the need to strengthen skilling initiatives.
He said AAI airports could serve as testing grounds for innovation and called for efforts to design, certify and manufacture airport equipment in India and subsequently export it.
The speakers were addressing VORTEX 2026, a conference on the National Initiative for MSME Integration into Global Aerospace Supply Chains, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in partnership with the Ministry of Civil Aviation
(With inputs from PTI)